


Masquerade

by Batwynn



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, M/M, major death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2136102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batwynn/pseuds/Batwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki always knew he was dreaming, because everything was too brilliant, too vivid, and often too obnoxious. When he wakes, there is nothing vivid, or brilliant about the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masquerade

 

 

_Summer rain always had a way of easing Loki into sleep and keeping him prisoner there. Today, He woke up sometime early in the morning, and the sound of rain against the window lulled him back to sleep before he could even raise his head from the pillow._

____  
  
Loki always knew he was dreaming, because everything was too brilliant, too vivid, and often too obnoxious. In his dreams, Thor was always a giant, head aflame with golden fire, his words so strong and commanding they shook the earth below their feet. A leader, a dominating presence, a _monster_.  
  
Odin was silent, a one-eyed shadow that traveled through his mind like ripples across the water's surface. Ripples that grew into waves, terrifying, roaring waves that tore Loki away and battered him against the sharp rocks. Somehow, Odin always managed to surprise him, no matter how many times Loki had been crushed under those dark waters.  
  
In Loki's dreams, they were always so much _more_ than what they were in reality, and Loki wondered if it was his mind's way of showing him how transparent they really were, or how fragile _he_ really was. That, no matter how many falls Loki had survived, one of these days the giant would burn him, or the waves would swallow him up.  
  
It was sometimes strange how not all who he met in life left an impression on him deep enough to enter his dreams. He never dreamed of Thor's friends, or mortals, or even his true father. He almost wished he would, if only to gain some small insight to the man who cast him out for failing to even be a monster.  
  
Oh, But there was _beauty_ , the single exception and the only one that never came to him often as he would have liked.  
  
His mother was beautiful, and in his dreams, she was _not_ more than she truly was. Frigga was everything she had always been to Loki. She was a warm light—so unlike Thor's blaze—she was gentle, and steady, and cast no shadows for Loki to get lost in. But, Frigga only came to him once after her passing, and Loki would always feel a part of him remain cold for the lack of her presence. Even one visit had been too much, too brilliant, too vivid.  
  
  
  
Then...  
  
Then, there was Anthony, who Loki simply could not comprehend. The man was a walking contradiction; accepting or judging as he saw fit, and often changing direction before he had even finished deciding which he was going to do. Why he seemed to be so accepting of Loki, and not of some of his teammates was still a mystery to him even to this day. What made it curiouser was that he was the only mortal who Loki had ever actually dreamed about. Which meant he left something of an impression upon him, and that was no easy thing to do.  
  
In Loki's dreams, Anthony was no giant, no burning monster or shadowy figure. Nor was he that gentle glow, supportive and full of trust.  
  
Anthony was the masked man. He would flicker around the dream's borders, ducking behind whatever objects Loki's mind offered him that night. Then, suddenly, the mask would appear right before him, and a fascinating babble of nonsense would wash over Loki just as it often did in reality when Stark would talk to him. It felt like a game, and it was strange, but not entirely unwelcome.  
  
What was truly different about the mortal, was that Anthony changed, where the others did not. When Thor remained the giant beast in his land of rock and flame, Anthony would join him in a new place to play hide-and-go-seek, and every night, he was greeted with a new mask with a new expression. Loki knew each one to be a lie.  
  
Sometimes, when Anthony would have a bad day in reality, the mask would be a sickly-wide smile as the man danced around his dreams like a jester. Those were the days when he came back from a battle bruised and bloodied, complete with a 'V for victory' and a massive grin. When his day was good, and the inventor seemed happy to be working in his shop or talking to his team, the mask would sometimes cry inky tears while Anthony curled up in the branches of a tree, and refused to get down.  
  
If Frigga was his comfort, Odin his doubt, and Thor his drive, than Anthony was his distraction. Or, perhaps, his _fascination_ , which was just another thing he had lost in the void. Something about seeing everything and anything, all happening at once in a single moment that felt like an eternity, killed his curiously. He had no more cravings for knowledge, no need to master a skill, or to learn, or to love. He had seen it all, and it had ruined him.  
  
But Anthony, oh, of _course_ it was Anthony who drove him to need things once more. A brilliant man, a vivid, obnoxious man. It was no surprise that only he could be the one to light that spark in Loki again. Loki wanted to learn, and Stark wanted to teach. So, by day they would spend time in the lab talking of science and magic and 'social media', and in the night Loki played the mortal's game of chase through the shadows of the trees or the sun of the desert. Each time he would capture Anthony just to see what lie he had to face that night. A smile, a grimace, a crying face, a nasty grin.  
  
It was a conundrum Loki needed to solve, and the longer the answer alluded him, the more his curiosity grew, and grew, and grew.  
  
  
It grew until Loki found himself learning more of the real Anthony, rather than the dream one. It grew until he was spending entire days with the man, and it grew until he was spending the nights with him too.  
  
Yet, even as Loki curled against that warm body every night, the mask appeared soon after he shut his eyes no matter how close they had gotten. Slowly, over days and months, Loki learned what each one meant, and over time grew to understand them better. The lying smiles, the tears that came forth when he spoke too long to Rogers, the desert that they often found themselves running through. Loki knew them now, and those days when Anthony came back from battle, all wide smiles and cheerful babble, Loki knew there would be a frowning mask to haunt his dreams that night.  
  
He got better at fixing the masks and time passed until he was able to change those fakes into reality.  
  
Still, they grew, and Loki still dreamed of fire and oceans sometimes. But his nights were more often filled with masks, and Anthony still hid and danced and lied through his dreams. It was an unusual game, but Loki learned to love it.  
  


_____  
  
Today, this rainy summer day that lulled him back to sleep, Loki chased the fleeting figure to a river. He was smiling in his dream, something he did in reality so often now, that Thor felt the need to compliment him for it. Thor's dream figure still had not changed, but Loki had, and that was what mattered.  
  
So he chased, and laughed, and reached out for Anthony's back as he ran. When Loki finally managed to capture him, he turned him round to see what facade he would fix today. There was no smile, no sneer, or woeful eyes.  
  
Anthony's mask was blank.  
  
And Loki screamed, because nothing in his dreams or anything across the Nine Realms had ever scared him quite so much as that _nothing_ looking up at him.  
  
The summer rain still pattered against the glass as Loki's scream drove him from his dreams. He threw himself from the blankets, twisting and thrashing, desperate to get away from that empty face.  
  
He stilled at last, and breathed, staring at the window as he tried to remind himself it was just a dream. Only a _dream_. The rain was the only sound other than his breathing, and suddenly Loki remembered why that was wrong. There should be one more, because Loki went to sleep with his arms wrapped around a warm body.  
  
He went cold, not just from the chill of the storm but a cold that was as dark and heavy as the depths of ocean. Roaring waves washed over him, crushing his chest as Loki tore away the sheets that covered the still man next to him, to turn the face to see...  
  
 _A mask_.  
  
Not a smile, or a grimace. No inky tears, or a maddening grin.  
  
Blank as his dream, lax and empty and _cold_.  
  
A thousand words could never be enough to beg, to plead for this moment to be a dream. But nothing was vivid, or brilliant, or obnoxious in this world, anymore. Nothing was left to learn or need or love.  
  
Loki ran his hands over Anthony's lifeless face, and wished that this one mask would be a lie.  
  



End file.
